dodint wrote:Yeah, I get that. But I doubt they were standing in the street throwing their hats in the air and making out with nurses. Folks in London, Nagasaki, and Berlin standing among their ruins would probably be feeling a quiet relief that borders closer to grieving than euphoria. The US was perhaps the only country in the world to come out of WWII better than it went in.

Certainly Nagasaki and Berlin were probably not super cheerful places to be when the surrender was announced. But in, London VE Day was declared a national holiday, and the streets were completely full with people celebrating the end of a near decade-long entanglement. I've even read some stories that the Princess Elizabeth (the current Queen) and her sister, Princess Margaret, mingled in amongst the crowd anonymously up and down the Mall and going as far as Trafalgar Square. The celebrations only came to a close because a thunderstorm rolled in around midnight.

Two views of Picadilly Circus on May 8, 1945

More revelry

No doubt the U.S. emerged better off then when it entered the conflict. But by all accounts, London was a pretty bonkers place to be when the surrender announcement was made.

dodint wrote:Yeah, I get that. But I doubt they were standing in the street throwing their hats in the air and making out with nurses. Folks in London, Nagasaki, and Berlin standing among their ruins would probably be feeling a quiet relief that borders closer to grieving than euphoria. The US was perhaps the only country in the world to come out of WWII better than it went in.

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Excluding the American families who lost sons , husbands etc. The vets who spent the rest of their lives blind, paralyzed, or missing limbs may not have considered themselves better off than before the war.

Sure, but outside of some tokenism are veterans really revered/mourned in this country? Hardly. WWII was the last time that homeland Americans sacrificed anything tangible for a war effort. America is not at war, the military is at war, America is at the mall.

To break it down to raw, crude numbers. The percentage of Americans killed in WWII represents 0.32% of the population. For Germany? Estimates put it at 8.0-10.5%.

As for the veterans that survived but were maimed and how that affects their families? Honestly, it's such a different time that I couldn't even dream of quantifying that. The main difference between then and now is that they had a draft, whereas I volunteered. I bet if we had a draft or compulsory service in this day and age people would start to pay attention real quick. I don't advocate for that but it illustrates my point. Besides, you took a statement made about the economic health of one of the largest nations on earth and applied it to a very, very small subsection of that population and their mental well being. Not exactly a fair comparison.

Gwar put on one hell of a live show, sadly im guessing it was drugs. Shocking im sure....but he was such a funny nice dude. As a younger nerd, I spent a lot of cash on Gwar and I talked with members of the band when in pgh. Poor guy...